Sen. Elizabeth Warren listens to John Stumpf, the chief executive of Wells Fargo, testify before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee in Washington, DC, on September 20, 2016. (Photo: Gabriella Demczuk / The New York Times)

Having lost control of every branch of government, the short-term objective for Democrats must be to minimize the worst elements of the Trump agenda. But Democrats have used a perceived absence of power to water down their own legislative agenda to placate corporate donors in the past.

The Illinois Department of Corrections has finally begun the process of closing down Stateville Correctional Center's roach-infested F-House, the last surviving panopticon -- a building where prisoners are subjected to 24-hour surveillance.

Under financialized capitalism, the private vice of greed is no longer magically converted into a public virtue -- depriving capitalism even of its last, consequentialist moral justification. Stylizing owners and managers of capital as trustees of society has lost any remaining credibility.